I am one of those annoying people who have played a great majority of the Final Fantasy franchise. I can tell you who the most iconic villains are (and why), my favorite story moments, and even which games I think are overrated (welcome to the stage, FF8). With that connection to the series, after a while things begin to feel…too familiar. Certain things start to feel like a song and dance I’ve seen before, and not in a flattering way. Final Fantasy Resonance, on the other hand, has done something surprising. It has made me hopeful and excited for the future of the series again.

I covered the demo a while ago, and in that coverage I mentioned that Final Fantasy Resonance pulls elements of its story (including its cast) from the first story arc of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, a mobile gacha game that ran from 2019 to 2025 in Japan, and a shorter period of 2020 to 2024 globally. However, after spending a lot of time with Final Fantasy Resonance, I am pleasantly surprised at the dev team’s ambition.

Things are much more intimately fleshed out here. Additionally, characters who only received smaller “story events” or small places in Brave Exvius now have bigger roles, sometimes in multi-side-quest arcs that are optional yet offer special benefits upon completion. Every aspect of the game’s world, from collecting visions to roaming the world for challenge caverns or even the in-game colosseum, all connects fluidly. It makes the world not only feel alive, but also like the lush, content-rich experiences of games like Final Fantasy 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9, without some of the bloat that people complain about.

You play as a group of characters, beginning with Rain and Lasswell, two knights of the land of Grandshelt who are sent to stop mysterious foes from destroying the crystals. It feels like a standard “Final Fantasy” story, but the HD-2D style is pushed to a level that I’ve never seen before. Cinematics are lush and beautiful, character animations are expressive, emotive, and are fully voiced. There were many moments that made me cry, just from how the storylines (even side quests) tugged at my heartstrings.

The combat feels somewhat similar to Persona or Shin Megami Tensei, in that each character in your party has a set of abilities they come with by default. The visions you unlock and equip also have their own abilities, so you can mix and match to hybridize your characters however you want. This has a little bit of a limitation to it, since you aren’t able to fully unlock all of their spells to use anytime. However, you can unlock passives across multiple visions, and change your setup before bosses or challenging fights.

It isn’t perfect. In some ways, I feel like the vision system is a little limiting at times. However, that is part of the challenge: Crafting a “build” for your characters and your party as a whole to take on whatever you are facing. Enemies have elemental weaknesses and need to be staggered if you really want to maximize damage. I hope that Final Fantasy Resonance gets a sequel (there are several more story arcs to explore) so that the development team can play around with polishing this system even more.

The other odd thing about Final Fantasy Resonance is that while the story cutscenes and pretty much all major dialogue are localized in English, any Resonance Skills (basically Limit Breaks for your Vision partners) with characters from classic Final Fantasy titles are solely localized in Japanese (example shown above). It is a weird line to draw, especially when there are a lot of characters that already have active English voices they could draw from. It is a small thing, though, so I can’t complain too much.

There is a lot to sink into with Final Fantasy Resonance, but I could spend hours just talking about the small details. So, instead of that, I’ll just say that Final Fantasy Resonance did something I didn’t think could happen. It made me feel like a young, excited, starry-eyed Final Fantasy fan again. After several disappointments (Final Fantasy XVI among them), this was a bright spot that I can see myself playing through multiple times.

Even if you aren’t a Final Fantasy Fan, even if you haven’t played any part of the series before, this is a wonderful RPG that is easy to understand and dig into. The cast is lovable, the soundtrack is beautiful, and the story is really wonderful. In a year stacked with great releases, Final Fantasy Resonance could be high on my GOTY list this year. It is purely a love letter to the series, or perhaps its fans, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

A PC Review Copy of Final Fantasy Resonance was provided by Square Enix for the purposes of this review.

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Final Fantasy Resonance

$49.99

10

Score

10.0/10

Pros

• Wonderful Classic Final Fantasy-style RPG
• Beautiful Storylines and Side Quests
• Best usage of HD-2D I've ever seen
• Highly customizable progression systems
• Fantastic Soundtrack

Cons

• Vision Voices not being Localized is weird